Nothing Feels Like Christmas
by JellyBean30
Summary: HouseCameron. Written for the 2007 Secret Santa Fic exchange. A little melancholy, a little instrospective ... but maybe a little hope at the end. OneShot.


This fic was originally written for the Secret Santa Fic Exchance at the LiveJournal House/Cameron community. Merry Christmas athousandsmiles!!

My challenge was:  
1. Some reference to _A Charlie Brown Christmas_.  
2. House playing carols on his piano or guitar.  
3. An unseasonably warm spell.

**Nothing Feels Like Christmas**

You stand in the conference room, staring fixedly out the window, watching the fierce red sunset darken into a majestic purple. You rarely take the time for such simple pleasures as watching the sunset or smelling the roses, despite what anyone else might assume. Assume. You're tired of what people assume about you. Today the sun captures your attention as it descends below the horizon Princeton's skyline provides. As you watch that golden orb sink like the rocks you used to toss into the pond behind the barn you can feel yourself sinking as well.

Depression always flirts with you this time of year. Normally you can fake a festive mood, filling your days with endless holiday shopping and festooning your apartment and the office with cheerful decorations. Most years the false cheer infects you like the flu you vaccinate yourself against and you're able to enjoy the mechanics of the holidays, if not feel the true spirit.

This is not one of those years.

Nothing feels like Christmas this year.

The majestic purple darkens to a weak black, the sort of dark that isn't really dark that defines night in a fair-sized city. As the first distant stars begin to shine, you realize you've been just standing there when there is work to be done. You force your eyes down to the floor, hoping to break the hypnotic hold the sky seems to have over you.

Pine needles.

The floor is covered in a thin layer of dried pine needles. Even as you see them you can feel them crunching under your shoes and hear the brittle crackling. You look at the wreath that you hung on the shelves and sigh. They teased you, of course, but you told them the wreath was supposed to symbolize the never ending joy of the season, or something along those lines. Besides, the smell of the pine reminds you of Christmas when you were little. That seemed to satisfy them. Well, two of them. You hadn't bothered trying to satisfy him; nothing you could have said would have mattered anyway.

The wreath, so lush and verdant, with the pleasant forest scent of your youth is now valiantly clinging to the precious few needles remaining on the center vine. Yet another casualty of the ridiculously warm weather the eastern seaboard has been experiencing the past week. You suspect that has more than a little to do with your difficulty finding even a false sense of holiday cheer this December.

Nothing feels like Christmas when it's sixty degrees outside.

The candy canes you brought in have long since been eaten. The delicate paper snowflakes you hung fare somewhat better, lasting almost four days before being pulled down, balled up and 'put to more practical use' as makeshift basketballs. The wreath is the last bastion of holiday spirit, the sole recognition that the season of giving is upon you and now … it is giving up the ghost.

Defeated, you go to the desk in the corner and remove the hand held vacuum cleaner you keep there. They teased you about that too, but it's stupid to call maintenance every time a half packet of sugar or a few coffee grounds go astray. You vacuum up the needles on the floor and empty them into the trash. You carry the trash can to the shelves and stare at the wreath. Throwing it away feels like admitting you lost this year, and you aren't ready to do that. Will you be able to battle back the soul sucking sadness that is lurking behind every corner of your mind if you give in so easily? If the wreath symbolizes the never ending joy of the season, what does throwing it away symbolize?

The hollow thud it makes when it lands in the trash is disheartening at best.

"Throwing away a wreath?" a gruff voice asks from behind you. You drop your head. Damn. "Feeling a little Charlie Brown today?"

You don't respond. What is there to say? He will see through any lie instantly, and mock the truth if he hears it. You're too tired to fight with him over something you don't really believe in anymore and you have no intention of becoming an easy mark for a restless predator. You merely shrug and return the trash can to its customary place beside the coffee pot. You fuss at the counter for a minute, listening for his retreating footsteps, until you realize he is apparently still waiting for some kind of answer.

"You win," you say. "The decorations are gone. I'm sure you've just been waiting for the wreath to shuffle off this mortal coil so you could go back to pretending you're not spending another Christmas high, drunk and alone." The venom you hear in your voice surprises you; you almost sound as if you believe _him_ to be responsible for your lack of Christmas cheer.

"Careful with that kind of talk. Santa will revoke your honorary elf privileges."

"Because of course you're right and I'm the foolishly sentimental bringer of good cheer you think I am," you say dryly, if a little bitterly. His expression shifts; it's subtle, but you recognize it. He will never stoop so low as to admit you intrigue him, but every so often someone acts so out of what he believes to be their character that he has to consider perhaps he's miscalculated. Or worse, he's dismissed a puzzle as completed only to find an extra piece; an extra piece that forces him to deconstruct the puzzle and start reforming it again in a new image.

You won't survive that sort of scrutiny. You are already bailing out your sinking ship with a specimen cup. If he starts pouring buckets of cold water over you, you will surely drown. You can't fight the battle on both fronts and so you make a tactical, if cowardly, decision. You retreat, mumbling something about checking on blood work and barricading yourself in the relative safety of the lab. You hide behind a microscope, subjecting the slides to the sort of close examination you so fear.

You remain in the lab, in a stalemate with your fear, until you feel a return to the conference room is safe. You gather your things quickly and flee without consideration of where you are going. You find yourself in the wrong stairwell, entering the first floor not in the lobby as you expect but near the auditoriums. You walk quickly past the darkened classrooms, your heels echoing eerily in the deserted corridor, until their echo is drowned out by the delicate strains of a piano.

You follow the sound, a familiar song but not one you can place at the moment, to a small classroom in the middle of the long hall. The door has not swung fully closed behind the room's sole occupant, and the muted melody drifts into the hallway and quickly dies. It's him. Sitting at the piano, seemingly oblivious to the world around him; he is nothing like the man you know. His eyes are closed, but rather than concentration his expression is almost …enjoyment. It's disturbing; he looks like any other man, and he should never look like any other man.

'O Tannenbaum', you finally realize.

The music stops and you tense, afraid of being caught. You aren't doing anything wrong, of course, but he won't see it that way and this is exactly the confrontation you're trying to avoid. You hold your breath and wait. Finally, he returns to the instrument and you breathe out a sigh of relief, slinking as quietly as possible down the hall as 'The Carol of the Bells' follows you.

You collapse when you get home; there's no need to put up a false front when there's nobody to see it. You look at the unopened box of ornaments in the corner of the living room. You wonder now why you even bothered to wrestle it out of storage. You want to do exactly what you had accused him of doing, pretend that Christmas doesn't exist.

You don't feel like Christmas this year.

You give up trying to keep the sadness at bay and escape to your bedroom. You toss and turn, not even able to snuggle under your favorite quilt for comfort. Sweaty and annoyed, you throw off the covers and climb out of bed just long enough to strip down to your panties. Wearing nothing else, you are just cool enough to snuggle under the quilt and finally fall into a fitful sleep.

You arrive at work early the next morning as usual. You go straight for the coffee pot. You will brew your own, of course. Not because you make such great coffee, but because you simply can't wait for the others to get in for the much needed caffeine fix. You pass by the shelves at least twice between the coffee pot and the desk before you notice it.

A new wreath. Larger than the first, with a crimson bow and thin silver garland.

You stop in your tracks. He is the only one who knows you threw the first one away. He is the only one who could have known to replace it. You don't know what to make of that. You lean in closer and inhale the pine scent, almost enjoying the spark of nostalgia that comes with it. Then you notice the post-it.

_Even Charlie Brown ended up with a nice tree._

The note isn't signed, but you recognize the handwriting just the same. You slip the note in your pocket. You turn back to the coffee pot and he is watching you from the hall. You tense immediately and think fleetingly that perhaps your mother's suggestion of an acupuncturist isn't so crazy.

You wait for him to enter the room and mock you.

You hope he won't.

He doesn't.

Instead he just nods. You smile, cautiously, and nod a thank you. He glares then, as if daring you to tell someone he has a heart. Your smile changes to a smirk and you cover your mouth. His secret is safe with you. He nods again and limps down the hall and out of sight.

You finger the note in the pocket of your lab coat and inhale the rich scent of coffee and the subtle tang of pine needles.

You decide to hang up your ornaments after work that evening.

Now it feels like Christmas.


End file.
